


and if the night is burning (i will cover my eyes)

by wiznearbi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Rise of Kyoshi, The Shadow of Kyoshi
Genre: F/F, Gen, No Plot, One Shot, and about her past, i only proof read this once, just kyoshi thinking about aang's decisions, major spoilers for Shadow of Kyoshi, sorry if this seems a bit like roku bashing!! its not meant to be, spoilers for Rise of Kyoshi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25727725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiznearbi/pseuds/wiznearbi
Summary: The new Air Avatar has grey eyes. He wants to know how to defeat the Fire Lord.Kyoshi doesn't tell him about the Camellia-Peony War.
Relationships: Aang & Kyoshi (Avatar), Aang & Roku (Avatar), Jinpa & Kyoshi (Avatar), Kelsang & Kyoshi (Avatar), Kyoshi & Rangi (Avatar), Kyoshi & Yun (Avatar), Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar), Past Kyoshi/Yun (implied), Roku & Kyoshi (Avatar)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 133





	and if the night is burning (i will cover my eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for both the Kyoshi novels!

History sees the Camellia-Peony war as the beginning. To Kyoshi, it was the end. The end to an innocent serving girl who sang poetry with kitchen maids, the end to the Gravedigger of Zhulu Pass. The end to a laughing boy with stars in his eyes and the world at his fingertips. 

At seventeen, she would have rather buried herself in the ground than trust herself to advise anyone, but she lived 230 years and has seen almost 200 more. Time like that tends to build confidence in a person. When the new Air Avatar - the last of his kind - reaches into the depths of his soul to seek her guidance, she does not tell him about the Camellia-Peony war. She does not tell him about Yun. It’s a long story, after all, and they are _running out of time._ Instead, she tells him about Chin.

_“Only justice will bring peace.”_

Despite her wisdom and experience she sees very clearly that her answers are not enough. As her message becomes clear to him, she watches his expression crumble. Like every airbender she has ever known, he wears his heart on his sleeve like a scroll.

She recognises the despair in his eyes, the way he wears his arrows as if he is sure he doesn’t deserve them. She’s seen the same look in the man who raised her. Kelsang, whose winds knocked the breath out of a hundred pirates but whose arms held her so gently when she cried. In those storm-grey eyes she sees Jinpa, with his split loyalties and cryptic explanations, the way his youthful voice is - _was_ lighter than his ancient gaze. She sees Yangchen and she knows the nun’s opinion will be the one Aang will value most. She tries not to see Jesa, to think of the winding serpent that marred the blue arrows she carried and couldn’t shed. Every single airbender she had ever known, their descendants wiped out by Zoryu’s, their memories lost forever.

She had spent a lot of time in the Southern Air Temple. Would she have met an ancestor of Aang’s?

Guiding Roku had been easy for the most part. In the early days of his Avatarhood he listened, and he respected his teachers. But he was still a firebender, and therefore he was stubborn. Despite her numerous warnings, he had forgiven the treacherous Sozin time and time again and dismissed the worries of herself and the advisors who surrounded him. By the time he had realised, it was too late and would have been too late even if he had survived the volcanic eruption. She’d had half a mind to admonish him when he made it into the Spirit World, but his haunted expression had quietened her.

She can tell every interaction her successor has with his own fills him with anguish he hides from the boy. She and Roku share the same soul. She knows he blames himself for everything that his former friend committed, but she hasn’t mustered the energy to reassure him otherwise. (She’s a good liar, but not that good. Not as good as his great-granddaughter). He knows her too, and he can probably sense the accusation in her silence. Still, he says nothing.

Aang’s disappointment in her lingers long after her form dissipates, and she is left once more to a field of flowers and hazy mountains. The Spirit World is endless, but Kyoshi doesn’t know what to do with all the space. When she isn’t assisting her successors, she spends time with souls from her past. With Rangi and their daughter Koko, mostly, near the river where her glowing girl is strangely comfortable. Other times she meditates, thinks and grieves like she is back in her cave letting her last years pass her by like leaves in the wind. She doesn’t stand, letting the unbendable breeze lift stray hairs and arrange them elsewhere over her neck.

Time passes. Rangi notes that her appearance has changed to make her look older.

The next time the Avatar State is invoked, she knows it is another ending. To the war, to Aang’s first journey as the Avatar. Roku never dealt with a hardship like this one. Maybe it’s her Air Nomad heritage, but she feels more connected to the boy whose actions she contributes her skill to now than she does the old man in his quiet suffering.

Contributing to the power of the Avatar State is mentally taxing. Her soul awakes, and it digs through her mind and her memory until it finds what it’s looking for and takes it. Streams it out of her. She never knows where she is. Inside Raava, perhaps? All she can see is white. But she knows, somehow, she knows what they are doing. There is air, then fire. Earth breaks from the surface and rises. Water joins.

There is _anger_. Resentment. A desire to make him pay.

_Make Ozai pay._

And then…

It stops. She opens her eyes and is surrounded by fellow versions of herself. If she turned around, the never-ending rows would dizzy her. At the very back would be the first Avatar. Avatar Wan, she knows, but she’s never met him.

“What happened?” she asks. Her voice is quiet and hoarse, like she’s 230 again. She can feel Roku next to her, Kuruk to her right. Neither answer her question, and it takes her a moment to realise the sound never escaped her in the first place. She is stuck in her own mind, as Kyoshi, unable to control her body and she feels the sensation of pure _blue_. She’s not sure what it is, exactly. It’s nothing anyone before her has been able to do, she’s sure of it. All she knows is that this is new.

This is Aang.

She feels it at the same time they all do. He found his own way. He hadn’t needed their advice.

(It strikes her only later that maybe, he had. He’d just put his own twist to it.)

Later, she learns that the island in which he’d spoken to them had really been the shell of a Lion Turtle. In her long life she’d had time to study old lore, and she had some idea of what they were. The ancient being had granted Aang the power to bend the energy within an individual. The energy that allowed said person to bend their respective element.

Using this new skill, Aang hadn’t needed to kill the Fire Lord after all. He had instead dishonoured the man, stripped him of his title and his bending. After the difficulty of the direct aftermath of the war passes a new, benevolent Fire Lord takes the throne and with him, Aang hopes to lead the world towards a new era of peace.

When he speaks to them again, his eyes shimmer with hope as he shares with them his plans to rebuild the lost Air Nation. He only has twelve years’ worth of memories to guide him, some of them fuzzy and reconstructed from a year spent in the current war-ravaged world. Kyoshi gladly shares her own knowledge on their culture and heritage with him and at the end, he smiles so wide she feels her heart may burst if she still had one.

She senses his relief, and for a brief moment she is almost envious. Then, ashamed. Because the moment she heard what Aang did to the Fire Lord, well…her first thought had been of Yun.

That day, could she have bended Yun’s energy? Ended it all before it really begun? (It had been an ending, anyway.) Could taking his destructive power have saved the Fire Nation from its fate as a united, but ultimately broken nation? (Spirits above, that could have prevented _everything_.) Could…could…

She stops. Her inner Rangi strokes her cheek and whispers, somehow fitting everything she needs to hear into a single word.

_‘Kyoshi.’_

She is Kyoshi. Not the Avatar. She stops thinking about the world and as if she is seventeen again (she has a feeling her appearance may have changed then, but she wouldn’t have noticed) she thinks about Yun.

Even as the supposed Avatar, beloved by the four nations, Yun had been a lonely boy with few things he valued in the world. After Jianzhu, after Father Glowworm, he had only had Earth. Taking that away would have destroyed him. It would have been worse than death.

Yun would have despised her. There really couldn’t have been any other way.

She studies Aang’s face. His eyes are brighter than Kelsang’s, more burdened than Jinpa’s, softer than Yangchen’s. Jesa…she can’t imagine him as Jesa. He stares at her with the eyes of a child, and it takes her embarrassingly long to realise what he’s searching for. Validation. He wants to impress her. Her breath hitches, but she regains control of herself.

She has had almost 430 years to school herself. But that doesn’t erase the fact that she is Kyoshi.

Before she can stop herself, she tells him about the Camellia-Peony War.

She tells him about Yun.

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'i see fire' by ed sheeran. its late at night and honestly i just want to publish this but i need a title to do that lmao


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